Experimentations Within Early Modernist Painting In America(1910-1929)

Since the mid-twentieth century, the extraordinary intensity with which American Modernism has marked world painting culminated in New York displacing Paris as the capital of modern art. Yet the precise conditions and functions of the development of early modernism in the United States constitute an issue that still awaits further inquiry, since this entails an internal logic by means of which the United States finally opted for modernism as a constituent element of its own cultural identity; this particular turnwas also a key part of the narrative of American Modernism. This dissertation focuses on the period between 1910 and 1929, or in other wordsthe approximate period from the creation of the first meaningfully Modernist and purely abstract works by local American artists such as Arthur Dove, among others, to the beginning of the Great Depression. Under the impact of a worsening economic situation, Modernism was confronted a temporary hiatus. In terms of the argumentative structure, this dissertation will take as the starting point the artistic reforms and claims of local American artists such as George Inness and Winslow Homer, and argues in favor of the significant influence of this older generation of classic American masters vis-à-vis such aesthetic currents as the Ashcan School during this fledgling stage of Modernist Art. The discussion will subsequently examine the first major exhibition of Modernist Art in the United States, the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art at the Armory, especially within the context of art history, in order to analyze objectively the stylistic influencesthat this crucial exhibition imparted on American artists as well as the shock that these new artistic ideas,precipitated by this exhibition,generated within the world of art in America. Moreover, the two chapters on the respective experimental and foundational periods of Modern Art in America will focus on two of the most representative schools—Synchromism and Precisionism respectively—in order to highlight the processes in which early local American modernists proceeded from slavishly following the artistic practices of their European counterparts towards gradually establishing artistic elementswhich manifest the modern spirit in the United States. Finally, as the conclusion of such explorations, the focus of the paper will engage with the subtle and barely perceptible influences of the art and ideas of these early Modernists on the later development of Modernism.Aside from advancingsome connecting threads in the development of Modernism in the United States, this dissertation will also suggest, by means of large numbers of examples and detailed analyses of the paintings, the followinghypothesis: early American Modernism experienced an initial period of disorientation and a foundational period, withits forms borrowed from European Modernist Art while its spirit stemmed from the modern experience in America; this therefore renders it an art with a double identity. In contrast to the rebelliousness, anarchism and metaphysical connotations within Modernist Art in Europe, American Modernism from the beginning harbored possibilities of a distinctive bearing. It was not an art that utterly rebelled against tradition but one that strongly emphasized the continuation of creating tradition; its abstract language was not the visual manifestation of cryptic ideas but the visual experience of modern industry and urbanity in America.